Authors note: The very first section is from the episode the Gift per (go here http/ I just copy and pasted it. The rest is mine- not that I own BTVS or A: TS, but the plot bunny that started this fic has burrowed into my head…you know maybe Anya was right about the bunnies……….
DAWN
Buffy...
no ...
BUFFY
Dawnie...
I have to --
DAWN
NO!
BUFFY
Listen
to me! There's no time, Dawn,
please listen.
"I need you to listen to me Buffy- I know what you're going to say-so don't! I love you I do but this is why I was made! This is my -" Dawn swallowed a sob as she maneuvered her body to be between her sister and the edge of the metal platform. "This is my destiny- not yours- you are needed here- everyone there needs you here-"
"Dawn don't- please don't"
Buffy stood still; not believing fully that her little sister was going to jump to her death. No- her little sister was saving the world.
"I love you Buffy, I love all of you please tell them- all of them- they are the best family I could have ever had- you are the best sister I could have eve hoped for….Good Bye…"
Hazel green eyes stared through flowing tears at Dawn as she turned and took a few swift steps before she leapt off the edge. Her falling form glowed a soft green light that brightened to white as she reached the opening portal, causing it to become brighter then the sun and the world shook as the two met.
Everyone on the ground among the ruins of battle, human and demon alike, stared in wonder as the light of the portal expanded and covered the whole of Sunnydale, pulling it out of the night.
"Dawn"
She couldn't breathe. It could have been hours or seconds but as she was surrounded in the white light, she couldn't breathe. But she knew this, knew what ever was happening to her deep down in her bones and she couldn't help but smile.
She was the key to lock the door to the monsters.
Then suddenly she was pulled but not by the gravity of her world. Not to the concrete and metal of the battle field.
She was no longer in the darkness of Sunnydale.
The sky was a brilliant purple with a blaze of amber through out, lighting it as if it was on fire. And from the perch in the large, well she assumed it was a tree with blue bark and red leaves. Really it looked like this whatever world she was in was colored by a child.
Suddenly a flying demonic creature screamed a horrific sound and fell down into the high red-tinted grass below.
Minutes after she saw a boy about her own age dressed in skins, take a long sharp weapon that resembled a many pointed sword take of the winged beasts head.
Dawn cringed to see the boy start to dismember the beast, as its blue blood flooded the red grass, and her movement caused every single cut on her stomach to burn and any scabbing that formed to reopen.
"Ah- Owwww" Dawn moved her arm to cover her wounds and started to loose her balance on the tree branch. "No-no please no don't fall Dawn-Ow-"
Dawn's movement and cries to herself were loud enough to catch the attention of the boy- who watched in fascination as her grip failed and she fell. He quickly ran to the base of the tree and jumped against it, the move causing him to propel high enough in the air to catch hold of her.
During their fall he turned and managed to manipulate her fall so she landed softly in the thick grass and he landed on his feet, crouched like a cat ready to kill, if he so needed.
"What are you" His eyes were a piercing blue and his voice wasn't a deep baritone like most of the men in her life, it was like Xander's, only threatening. But his question was what got her.
"What am I? I- ow" her body convulsed in pain "I'm hurt that's what I am! I'm a hurt girl who doesn't know where she is-"That's when the reality of it all hit her. Hard. And the tears started to flow again. She was lost. She had jumped to her death and instead of the afterlife she was in this other world…Glory's home- she was in a hell dimension that had beings more powerful then Glorificus. Ones that may want to use the Key for their own purposes and she had no one. No Buffy. No Giles. No Willow. No Xander. No Anya. No Tara. No Spike. She was alone and there was a strange boy- a hunter, a predator who had her at his mercy.
She did the only thing she could think of. She cried. Hard.
She didn't notice the older man walking up, armed, behind the boy. She didn't hear his voice, accented with English lit and the vocabulary of an educated man.
"Son, Stephen what have you found?"
"I think I found a girl"
Holtz walked up to his son, Stephen and found a young girl lying on her back crying as if her world had ended.
"A girl... well Stephen, I do believe you have."